Former Goldman Sachs banker sentenced to two years in prison for 1MDB role

Wearing a dark suit, the ex-banker apologised “to the people of Malaysia, who are the real victims”, adding that if “I could turn back time I would”. Leissner said he had “pretty much lost everything”, including his career, freedom, family and financial independence. One of Leissner’s daughters and his parents were in the courtroom.

“I lost my will to live,” Leissner said, “I tried to take as many pills as I could to end it then . . . it was absolute rock bottom.”

Judge Brodie said some of Leissner’s colleagues “were aware of what you were doing and simply looked the other way because everyone was getting rich”. She described the 1MDB case as “brazen corruption at the highest level of government in multiple countries”.  

Leissner’s sentence marks a milestone in US law enforcement’s investigation into the 1MDB affair, in which Goldman bankers helped corrupt Malaysian officials misappropriate about $4.5bn from its sovereign wealth fund, according to prosecutors. Leissner pleaded guilty early in the investigation and agreed to co-operate with prosecutors, testifying in the trial of one of his former colleagues, Roger Ng.

It proved critical in securing Leissner a more lenient sentence, despite his vital role in the embezzlement scheme.

Goldman admitted paying more than $1bn in bribes to obtain underwriting work and paid nearly $3bn in criminal fines under a resolution with the US Department of Justice, in a saga that spanned Malaysia, the Middle East, Switzerland and the US, engulfing high-flying financiers and politicians alike. The case also led to the prosecution of Malaysia’s prime minister at the time, Najib Razak, who was convicted and ultimately sentenced to six years in prison.

Ng was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2023 after a New York jury found him guilty of bribery and money laundering. Razak, who helped found 1MDB, is fighting his prison sentence in Kuala Lumpur. Another central figure, Malaysian financier Jho Low, was charged by US authorities. He remains at large and maintains his innocence.

Leissner is due to start his prison time on September 15. The judge did not impose a fine. Leissner has been on bail for the past seven years, with restrictions on his ability to travel, and was wearing an ankle monitor for some of that time, his lawyer, Henry Mazurek, said.

He argued his client had undergone a “tremendous transformation” in a bid to “regain the soul that he had lost”.

Leissner “wants the opportunity to right the wrongs he has committed”, added Mazurek, who asked for his client avoid time in prison.

The justice department did not recommend a sentence. Prosecutor Drew Rolle described the scandal as “the biggest financial crime in world history”, but said Leissner’s co-operation was critical to the investigation and charges against Ng and Low.

Leissner previously testified how he steered Goldman’s arrangement of three 1MDB bond deals in 2012 and 2013, which raised about $6.5bn before the ex-banker helped siphon more than $2.7bn from the Malaysian fund.

He told the court that he spent his share of the stolen 1MDB proceeds, about $60mn, on a 170ft yacht and real estate in New York and London as well as investments in Italian football team Inter Milan.

The bank’s general counsel Kathryn Ruemmler wrote to the judge this month to say Leissner “extensively lied to and deceived many people” at the Wall Street group and “has still not repaid one penny” of a $20.7mn arbitration award that a court in 2023 said he owes Goldman. 

Rolle said in court that the bank’s letter was “truly extraordinary” and came from an “institution continuing to resist responsibility for its central role” in the scandal. “It’s sort of like a getaway driver showing up at a cooperator’s sentencing”, he said.